With about a week and a day left until Mayhem at Misfit Mansion is out, here is the final part of the MM development series! I hope this has been an interesting read for fans of the book.
Pitching & Final Changes
Once the story outline, sample pages and character designs were completed, it was time to pitch the book to publishers! When Home for Horrors was picked up, there were a few changes I was asked to make. The first was to start the story from Iris’s point of view, and to cut the part with the three-headed dog. I was also asked to make the characters look slightly older. Here’s a first pass at some redraws.
Some of the designs here are still a little different from the finals, like Agnes’s hair clips and Kel’s shirt pattern. I ended up going back and redrawing the cast again a few months later. I think I must have changed Kel and Dahlia’s outfits again when working on the final pages!
Creating the Book
I’ve written a little about how I make pages in another post, but here’s a closer look! I always start with a typed script and “thumbnails”, which are very rough drawings of the page layouts. These are submitted to the publisher first, so they can offer any edits before I move on to the actual drawn pages. I also like coloring the characters in with a solid color so that it’s easier to see who is who!
Example of a script page.
Thumbnailed pages.
Thumbnailed pages.
One requested edit was to change the direction Iris is facing on page 14 within the fifth panel to match the direction she’s moving in the fourth. That also meant flipping her in some of page 15’s panels as well. After edits are applied, I move on to the line art!
The final part is to drop in flat colors, and then add shading and highlights. This step usually takes me the longest. Once it’s complete, I resubmit everything back to the publisher, and make any further edits until both sides are happy.
Cover Design
This step happens about half way into drawing pages. I always design 6 small ideas to show my publisher, who then decide which idea they’d like to go with. Here are the covers I pitched!
The publisher went with #3! We also ended up having to change the title from “Home for Horrors” to “Misfit Mansion” as requested by the marketing team. Sometimes this happens!
After the pages were done and the cover was finalized, Misfit Mansion would go on to be in bookstores about a year later, in 2023! In total, it took about 6 years from the earliest concepts to the final book. I’ve come to love this book a lot, and I’m grateful for all the love it's received! I truly hope readers will enjoy the sequel when it releases next week.
To end, here’s a bunch of art I made throughout the years of working on MM! Thanks everyone for supporting my work!
